There was a noisy night celebration on Main Street, but she had no desire to see it. She remained indoors reading the Star in the sitting room with Max, the cat. She ate no dinner. She cried herself to sleep.
However, now that the worst had come––as she naïvely informed the shocked Martha next morning––she began to feel relieved in a restless, feverish way.
A healthful girl accumulates much bodily energy over night; Palla’s passionate little heart and her active mind completed a storage battery very quickly charged––and very soon over-charged––and an outlet was imperative.
Always, so far in her brief career, she had had adequate outlets. As a child she found satisfaction in violent exercises; in flinging herself headlong into every outdoor game, every diversion among the urchins of her circle. As a school girl her school sports and her studies, and whatever social pleasures were offered, had left the safety valve open.
Later, mistress of her mother’s modest fortune, and grown to restless, intelligent womanhood, Palla had gone abroad with a married school-friend, Leila Vance. Under her auspices she had met nice people and had seen charming homes in England––Colonel Vance being somebody in the county and even somebody in London––a diffident, reticent, agriculturally inclined land owner and colonel of yeomanry. And long ago dead in Flanders. And his wife a nurse somewhere in France.
But before the war a year’s travel and study had furnished the necessary outlet to Palla Dumont. And then––at a charity bazaar––a passionate friendship had flashed into sacred flame––a friendship born at sight between her and the little Grand Duchess Marie.
War was beginning; Colonel Vance was dead; but imperial inquiry located Leila. And imperial inquiry was satisfied. And Palla became the American companion and friend of the youthful Grand Duchess Marie. For three years that blind devotion had been her outlet––that and their mutual inclination for a life to be dedicated to God.
What was to be her outlet now?––now that the little Grand Duchess was dead––now that God, as she had conceived him, had ceased to exist for her––now that the war was ended, and nobody needed that warm young heart of hers––that ardent little heart so easily set throbbing with the passionate desire to give.
The wintry sunlight flooded the familiar sitting room, setting potted geraniums ablaze, gilding the leather backs of old books, staining prisms on the crystal chandelier with rainbow tints, and causing Max, the family cat, to blink until the vertical pupils of his amber eyes seemed to disappear entirely.